On the Wrong Side
Chapter 2

Disclaimer: This work of fan-fiction is not intended for personal profit. All characters utilized herein which are not creations of myself belong to S. E. Hinton.

That night, Ponyboy said to Darry, "Um… Ihavetotellyousomething."

They were sitting at the dinner table, and Ponyboy decided that while they were eating, Darry might get a little less mad than if he had made his announcement right after Darry got in.

Darry replied, "What'd you say, Pony?"

Ponyboy cleared his throat and said, "I have to tell you something… and I guess you're not gonna like it."

Sighing, Darry reached for the salt shaker and shook it over the small piece of ham as he said, "Well, out with it already, Pony."

Ponyboy looked at his plate, suddenly not wanting to eat his mashed potatoes (a normal color for once). He half-mumbled, "Well, I sassed Mrs. Thomas today and got punished for it."

"Blast it, Ponyboy – you can't go around giving teachers cheek like that! You know better," Darry said levelly. "Am I gonna get a letter home sayin' you got a notation in your record, Ponyboy? The school's been payin' close attention to you since all that business last year."

Ponyboy looked up to see the disappointment on Darry's face. Somehow he found that harder to stand than Darry smacking the table, or getting red in the face and repeatedly tapping the table as he went on about Ponyboy's grades. But Darry hadn't even raised his voice all that much.

Ponyboy's voice took on a whiny tone as he replied, "Look, Dar, it was dumb and I know it. She says I have to tutor this other guy in my class for a month."

"Gimme a few minutes," Darry said. "I want to think about this."

Sodapop had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout this exchange, and he looked back and forth between them before resuming his dinner. Ponyboy and Darry did likewise, and the silence became oppressive.

Darry's knife clacked against his plate as he finished the last of the ham. He quickly wiped his mouth with the napkin, placed it on the table, and said, "Okay. Well, you're not gettin' a notation, and you're tutoring someone. That sounds kind of creative, actually, for a punishment. I figure that's fair for sassing a teacher. So who's the guy you're gonna tutor?"

Ponyboy hoped he wasn't showing his relief at getting off relatively lightly all around. "Name's Nicholas. Nicholas… uh, Westlake. Yeah, Westlake."

"Dunno any Westlakes."

"It was weird. I don't think he even knows about the whole greasers and Socs thing. I think he's a middle-classer, maybe."

Sodapop's fork clattered to the table and he scrambled to pick it up as he said, "Whoa. Hold the phone – this guy, in your school, don't know what a Soc is? Scotty beam him in from Mars, or somethin'?"

Sodapop had been entranced by Star Trek when it showed live on TV a while back, and Ponyboy tried to repress a grin at the "Scotty, beam us up" reference.

Darry said, "Y'know, that is pretty strange. Did he move in from somewhere else recently—"

Ponyboy broke in, bitterness evident in his voice. "Hah. I wish. No, he's lived here all his life, la-di-da, don't care about the way the rich kids look down on us. Besides, what makes y'all think I'd invite a Soc back over to our house? I bet Randy couldn't wait to get outta here after he saw me that one time he came over."

Darry firmly replied, "Okay, Ponyboy – I'm not interested in gettin' into a debate over the whole greasers and Socs thing right now. But you say this Nicholas fella's going to be over here every now and then. I'd like to meet him, though I doubt he's got a bad bone in his body."

Ponyboy grunted. "Well, I'll invite him over later this week, then; I gave him our telephone number in case he calls tonight, as well. Mrs. Thomas says I gotta pull up my own math grades, too."

Darry pursed his lips. "That means I'd better start takin' a closer look at your homework again, if you've been slippin'. Your teacher didn't say you had to be the only one doin' the tutoring."

Ponyboy smiled slightly, even though he chafed under this renewed scrutiny.

III

Nicholas hadn't called or come over the previous night, which made Ponyboy feel a bit guilty over the way he'd yelled at the guy. School that day was pretty mundane, as school days went, until Physical Education.

"Health and Fitness", Ponyboy decided, had to be the most euphemistically named segment of a Phys. Ed. Class, ever. The teacher, Mr. Holloway, had only been teaching the unit for a week and a half, and he'd already gotten embarrassed at least once a class when he had to mention private body parts or certain 'intimate activities'. Okay, so it turned Ponyboy's ears red, too, but he sort of knew what the guy was driving at, thanks to Steve Randle and Dallas Winston.

Not that he was going to thank the guy who thought he was just a pest tag-along of Sodapop's, and Dallas was dead.

But that day made things a lot worse for Ponyboy.

In the classroom just down the hall from the gym, Mr. Holloway strode to the front and yanked down the white projection canvas. The boys, already seated at their desks, murmured in anticipation as a film usually meant people could goof off without the teacher noticing.

Mr. Holloway stridently announced, "Your attention, please!"

Everybody faced forward, and waited for him to continue.

"Today we will be watching a very important film. In recent years, there have been rumors of certain, ah, kinds of people… demanding that the government give them rights. Oh, I'm not talking about Negroes, either. You'll, ah, see, when you watch this."

Mystified, Ponyboy turned in his seat and watched as the teacher made his way to the rear of the classroom, and fumbled a bit as he threaded the reel through the projector. Mr. Holloway never looked nervous. What was on the film that made him that uncomfortable?

The man was licking his lips nervously, and as he put his hand on the lever that would start the projector, he said, "Class, I want you to understand the importance of watching this film. It's… not something we normally talk about in day-to-day life, but we just – just want you to be prepared."

With a clack, the film started, and Mr. Holloway killed the lights. Ponyboy watched, rapt with first curiosity, as the words "Boys Beware" showed on the screen. Then dawning horror washed over him as he realized that "Ralph", the kindly man in the film, was in fact taking advantage of "Jimmy"! And Ralph liked… liked guys. And in that way.

And so did he, Ponyboy Curtis. He was a … that. A queer, he'd heard guys saying. He felt his stomach twist.

The film ended depressingly, with Jimmy having to go to the police as well, along with dire warnings about how to avoid homosexuals. It seemed that even though Ralph was the criminal here, Jimmy ended up getting some of the blame, too.

Ponyboy looked around as the lights came on, and saw that the other guys in the class, usually a bit rambunctious after a film ended, were quiet and sober. Mr. Holloway set the projector to rewind, and then began speaking, albeit with some embarrassment.

"As you can see, these… homosexuals, they're out there. Now, we have laws against those kind of people, but you can never be too careful."

He brought his hands together in a clap, and opened his mouth. Before he could speak, the rewinding reel began making a slapping noise as the loose end of the film hit the projector. He turned off the projector, and the reel came to a stop. He pulled it off the projector spindle and put it back in the thin canister, then put it on the middle shelf of the trolley on which the projector sat.

He then spoke up. "Right. I'll dismiss you early today, and we'll call this a study hall. Get out your homework or what-have-you. There's about half an hour left 'till lunch. No point in continuing the lesson right now."

Ponyboy sighed in relief as he dug out his English homework and let his eyes roam over the page – though he didn't get a whole lot done while his mind started an adventure in self-loathing.

III

Unfortunately, that afternoon was when Nicholas Westlake chose to attach himself to Ponyboy for math tutoring, seeing as they'd just gotten out of math class for last period.

He had said, "Might as well follow you as not – be easier to make sure I got the right address this way."

Then Nicky followed Ponyboy to his locker, and silently watched as Ponyboy, nervously trying not to look at Nicky like that, was struggling with his books. Finally, just as his biology, chemistry and civics textbooks all threatened to fall out of the locker at once, Nicky came up beside Ponyboy, their shoulders touching, and helped straighten out the books, lining them up neatly. Ponyboy nearly jerked away, then realized if he did so, his books might fall out again while they were straightening the mess out.

After the books were all sorted, Ponyboy stuffed his coiled math notebook and textbook into his carryall, and locked the locker. He nodded curtly at Nicky, and said, "C'mon. We'll go to my place now. Let's see if Two-Bit didn't get a detention this time. Maybe we can get a ride."

Sure enough, Two-Bit was in his car, running the engine to keep the car warm in the chilly winter twilight. Two-Bit leaned out the window, bellowing, "I'll be damned! It's Nicky! How's it swinging? Little to the left today?"

Ponyboy, a bit shocked at the reference, let out a strangled cough as Nicholas nonchalantly yelled, "The usual way, from side to side, ya know."

As they got closer, Two-Bit said, "So, Ponyboy. How do you know this jackass over here, huh?"

Nicky said playfully, "Oh, jackass, huh? That's fightin' words, Mister Mathews."

Two-Bit just cocked his eyebrow as Ponyboy, chuckling despite himself, said, "Mrs. Thomas said I had to help him with his math. I sassed her the other day and this is my, she says, 'punishment'."

"Beats a detention by a mile, Pony. You two want a ride?"

Ponyboy and Nicky didn't waste any time hustling into the car as Two-Bit rolled up his window and threw the heater on full blast before backing the old Plymouth out of the parking spot, then guiding it onto the road.

Amazingly, the radio worked, and the three of them let the tunes of Billy Davis's "Lonely Teardrops" fill the car. Ponyboy looked out the passenger side window as he tried to put out of his mind the film he'd seen. His stomach hadn't really stopped twisting itself into knots since the film, but now the jittery feeling was back, as strong as it had been just after the bombshell about homosexuals in that damned film.

Sighing, he leaned his head against the glass and closed his eyes as he felt the coldness crawl over his skull.

Author Notes:

I want to thank Misfit Greaser for his kind permission to use his OC and aspects of his fic, "A Purpose for Being", as well as beta reading to make sure I got Nicky in character. I also thank Marauder and the Q for her beta work. :)

For those of you who've noticed similarities between "A Purpose for Being" and this fic, they're intentional. This was conceived as a sort of slash AU version of that fic. :-D

Also, FYI, "Boys Beware" is a real film. You can download it off the Prelinger Archives or watch it on YouTube. It's a laughably inaccurate portrayal of the alleged dangers of homosexual men. In actual fact, it would be a rather accurate film if the warnings had been about pedophiles, but the filmmakers made the same error a lot of people do - which is to mix up preference for the same gender with preference for underage boys or girls.